GENOA — The Otsego boys soccer team suffered a heartbreaking 2-1 defeat on the road Wednesday as Genoa’s Bradan Nowak scored the game-winning tally with 6:14 remaining.
“The biggest problem we’ve been having as a program is mentally finishing the job, getting over the hill and doing it for 80 minutes,” Otsego head coach Ryan Carter said. “We have these lulls in the game where we let teams stay around that shouldn’t stay around.
“We’ve taken the lead more than once this year, and we haven’t won any of those games, so it’s just a matter of tightening up, communicating and finishing the job. We’re just not there right now.”
Jack Seeger delivered an early goal for the Knights, via an assist from Anthony Lee, with 35:49 left in the first half.
After Otsego’s Dylan Jones made a strong save on a laser from Genoa’s Jayden Kutchenriter with 2:28 left in the half, it looked like Seeger’s tally would give the Knights a halftime lead. However, Kutchenriter took a through ball from Nowak and planted the game-tying goal into the back of the net with 31 seconds left in the half.
“(Nowak) played a fantastic ball,” Carter said. “There wasn’t much you could do about it. It was just a really good ball to their next best player, and he put it away. It hit our goalie in the hands. You hope he keeps that out. Sometimes our defensive line was higher than we wish, but that ball was just really good.”
After a pretty even first half that featured four shots on goal for each team, Otsego’s Walker Waitt had the first chance of the second half, but his shot was saved by Genoa’s Joey Caughorn just over two minutes in.
In the 69th and 70th minutes, Otsego (1-5-2, 0-2-1 NBC) had a shot hit the crossbar and a shot deflected high and over the goal.
Jake Woollard’s strike from just outside the box with just under nine minutes left almost gave the Comets the lead, but instead it served as a prelude to Nowak’s goal just 2:35 later.
“It was a heck of a battle, in every sense of the word,” Genoa head coach Tim Memmer said. “It had good physical play. Both teams did an amazing job fighting and trying to get that win.”
Kutchenriter, who assisted on Nowak’s goal, nearly gave Genoa a 3-1 lead with 4:41 left on a direct kick from just outside the box after a yellow card, but the shot went just wide.
Otsego’s final chance came with 1:51 left when a yellow card on Genoa set up a direct shot opportunity for Axel Treutiger, but the shot sailed high.
Jones recorded five saves for Otsego, while Caughorn finished with six saves for Genoa.
In total, the two teams played pretty evenly as Otsego finished with 13 shots compared to 11 for Genoa (2-6, 1-3 NBC), while both accumulated seven on frame.
In the second half alone, each team had six total shots, including three on goal apiece.
“We’ve grown a lot,” Carter said. “We’re competitive for longer. This one’s just going to hurt for a while, so it’s going to take a minute to look back and pull the positives. There were tons of positives, but there’s still things that are keeping us from finishing the job that we have to continually address, and that’s the frustrating piece.”
